Hum Tum Shabana: A Disaster-Comedy

Minisha 'Shabana' Lamba is a beauty queen contestant. In spite of her puffy face and exercise-deprived-flab, she wins a couple of coveted titles. Not because she deserves it. Rather, two changu mangu hyperventilating managers of the Contest firm, Rishi (Tusshar Kapoor) and Kartik (Shreyas Talpade) are besotted by her. And obviously, their 'free advice', aided by some listerine induced bad jokes ensure that Shabana's dreams coast along merrily bouncing on some listless party tracks. As you may have understood by now, Sagar Ballary's 'Hum Tum Shabana' is a silly attempt at comedy that tests your patience. Unimaginably.

Rhea (Pia Trivedi) throws caustic verbal volleys to bring Shabana's winning wagon to a halt. Changu Mangu, smitten by Shabana, jointly propose to her. Enter Panju Don (Satish Kaushik), Shabana's Chacha with a strange fetish for Kaaju, Kishmish, Badaam and Akhrot. If you wanna win over Shabana, then you gotta participate in Panju Don's Alsatian-dogs powered reality show that 'tests' your capabilities or rather 'grooms' the prospective groom for the tough-road-ahead.

Rhea is kidnapped. She grooves to a sexy number with Changu Mangu in Don's Den. Ridiculous lampooning of a Janaaza procession adds to the absurdity. When Panju Don is upset, he slaps himself and when he is happy with someone, the dude gets slapped. The audience, I guess is expected to laugh which sorely doesn't happen. Munna Military (Sanjay Mishra) tries to breathe in some life in this high decibel, tacky madness. Farhajaan Shaikh's story/screenplay and Sharat Katariya's dialogues doesn't give him much scope. Shabana goes missing in the second half except for a token Kheer-ka-dabba moment (Jhagda with director behind this Shabana?). Screwless-Folks finally enter a Horror House and the most bizarre gesticulations follow. At this point, I lost it. Ran out of the theatre gasping for breath, climbed down the seven stories staircase in an animated state and heaved a sigh of relief on sighting normal civilisation on the road. I guess I didn't miss out much by not waiting to witness the (anti) climax. You won't either if you stay away from this disaster-comedy. Phew!

Star Rating: 1 star (The one star is for Pia Trivedi's hot dance number)

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